Online sales on Monday--aka Cyber Monday--rose 21% to $733 million, according to comScore, as quoted by the Wall Street Journal. This was a record for online sales on any one day. Some 60% of dollars spent came from people using computers at work, and the number of buyers rose 38% while money spent per consumer dropped 12%--a drop explained possibly by the many discounts offered this Cyber Monday.
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The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission expressed concerns
that some book prices would rise if Pacific Equity Partners, owner of
Angus & Robertson and Whitcoulls, buys Borders stores in Australia,
the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
The merged entity could end discounts and customer loyalty programs and
demand better terms from publishers and distributors, the Commission
noted.
Borders is divesting its stores in Australia and New Zealand as part of its new strategic plan announced earlier this year.
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We are the chancellors . . .
Tim Waterstone, founder of
Waterstone's Books, and Brian May, guitarist for the rock band Queen,
have been named chancellors of Edinburgh's Napier University and
Liverpool John Moore University, respectively. According to Student,
Waterstone "plans to take on the role of figurehead with the same
enthusiasm and passion witnessed in his business dealings," and "May,
60, balances his career as a rock star with a passion for astrophysics,
having recently earnt a Ph.D. from Imperial college London."
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The
late Norman Mailer has won this year's Bad Sex in Fiction Award "for
the most awkward description of an intimate encounter." The BBC reported
that he is "the first author to win the award posthumously." Excerpts
from the winner as well as the nominees can be found at the Guardian.
"We are sure he would have taken the prize in good humour," said the judges.
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Perhaps this qualifies only tangentially as book news (though James Bond is, after all, a product of Ian Fleming's novels), but Reuters
reported that Mr. Bond has given the "British Secret Intelligence
Service a recruitment headache--too many cranks want to join MI6." The
head of MI6 recruitment said the Bond myth "does tend to turn up quite
a lot of thrill seekers and fantasists and we're really not interested
in them. We don't have a license to kill--we don't carry
Berettas--that's simply not true."
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Following his recent announcement that Egmont U.K. will open a U.S. office (Shelf Awareness,
November 15), Douglas Pocock, executive v-p of Egmont U.S.A., has named
Elizabeth Law as v-p and publisher of Egmont U.S.A. Law was formerly
v-p and associate publisher of Simon and Schuster Books for Young
Readers. Pocock also confirmed that Random House will handle U.S. sales
and distribution.
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Effective December 11, Karen Forster is joining the Book Industry Study Group as associate director. She was formerly director of U.S. operations (publishing) at SPi and earlier worked at Butterworth-Heinemann and Elsevier.
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Harry Potter + Joe College = Joe Quidditch?
The first intercollegiate Quidditch match was held at Middlebury College this month, and USA Today
was there, reporting that at the "Intercollegiate Quidditch World Cup
Fall Festival, there were banners, team processions worthy of Olympic
opening ceremonies, halftime entertainment and 12 seven-person coed
Middlebury teams vying for the chance to play the visiting team from
Vassar College."
Despite calling this earthbound version of
Quidditch a "mongrel offspring of rugby, dodge ball and soccer," the
reporter conceded that somehow it all worked. Middlebury's Mollywobbles
defeated Vassar for the championship.
"Of all the things I've
done in my four years at Middlebury, this is by far the best," said
Ellie Molyneux, who played for the Bad Ass Muggle Flyers. "I won a
Jell-O wrestling contest one year, but this is far better."